Classics in Translation, Volume I

Greek Literature

Edited by Paul L. MacKendrick and Herbert M. Howe

Publication Year: 1959

Here, translated into modern idiom, are many works of the authors whose ideas have constituted the mainstream of classical thought. This volume of new translations was born of necessity, to answer the needs of a course in Greek and Roman culture offered by the Department of Integrated Liberal Studies at the University of Wisconsin. Since its original publication in 1952, Classics in Translation has been adopted by many different academic institutions to fill similar needs of their undergraduate students. This new printing is further evidence of this collection’s general acceptance by teachers, students, and the reviewing critics.

Cover

Title Page, Copyright Page

Contents

Greek Culture: An Essay

Many threads contribute to form the complex pattern of a culture—geographical, racial, economic, political, scientific, artistic, religious, and philosophical, and, certainly, temporal circumstances. Some acquaintance with
this total Greek pattern is essential if we are to
understand the values expressed in Greek literature. ...

The Iliad of Homer

Of the two poems ascribed to Homer, the Iliad and the
Odyssey, the Iliad was, to its first audiences and for generations after, their favorite poem. To a more recent,
more romantic, and less classical age the Odyssey, which
is easier to grasp on a quick reading, has proved more
attractive. ...

The Odyssey of Homer

The best cue to give a reader who wants to appreciate
the special quality of the Odyssey is the obvious one:
the Odyssey comes after the Iliad. It is the story of "a
man who wandered far and wide after he had destroyed
the sacred city of Troy." In the Iliad we are actively
engaged in a cruel and destructive war; ...

The Homeric Hymn to Hermes

The seventh and sixth centuries B.C. saw the composition
of the Homeric Hymns—poems in the meter and
language of Homer dealing with episodes in the careers
of the Olympian gods. The Homeric Hymn to Hermes
(written in the sixth century) is a fine example of this
mythological poetry in the archaic Greek style. ...

Selections from Hesiod's Words and Days

The writings of the didactic poet Hesiod offer the best
record of the social and economic changes which were
taking place during the archaic period. The father of
Hesiod had migrated from Aeolia to the small town of
Ascra in Boeotia, and had acquired a farm. ...

Lyric Poetry

To the Greeks the word lyric designated only that poetry
which was sung to the accompaniment of the lyre; they
had no general term to designate that vast body of
poetry which was neither epic nor dramatic. We use the
word lyric to fill this deficiency, meaning by it to describe
all personal utterance which, by and large, ...

The Pre-Socratic Philosophers

The writings of the philosophers who lived before the
end of the fifth century B.C. have almost all perished, so
that we are faced with the problem of reconstructing the
origins of Greek philosophy from such fragments as
have been preserved and from references by later writers. ...

Selections from Herodotus' The Histories

Herodotus, the "Father of History" and chronicler of
the first great conflict between East and West, was born
in the Dorian city of Halicarnassus, in southwest Asia
Minor, about 484, and died either in Athens or in south
Italy about 428 B.C. His busy and adventurous life embraced the period in which Athens, having proved herself the savior of Greece in the Persian War, ...

The Agamemnon of Aeschylus

Aeschylus (b. 525 B.C.), the first great writer of tragedy
in our western world, was criticized in his own time for
the limited action in his plays and the violence and obscurity of the language. The criticism, as far as it went,
was just. It is not in neatly contrived plots or fluid
poetic expression that his greatness lies, ...

The Antigone of Sophocles

In both personality and achievement Sophocles (ca.
496-406 B.C.) was a true son of the Golden Age in Athens.
Born in a prosperous family, possessed of physical
beauty, liberally educated, an accomplished musician,
actor, and conversationalist, and a consistent winner
of dramatic prizes, he was also successful in public life, ...

The Medea of Euripides

Euripides (ca. 480-406 B.C.) during his long life witnessed the pioneer development of democratic Athens,
the triumphs of the established empire, and the disastrous effects of the war, which led to growing disillusionment in Athens and ultimate defeat two years after
his death. ...

The Frogs of Aristophanes

The comedies of Aristophanes are not the least of the
great cultural monuments which Athens in the fifth
century B.C. created and bequeathed to posterity. On the
one hand they exhibit a creative originality, a technical
excellence and a universal humor that have scarcely
been equaled in the realm of comic drama; ...

The Constitution of Athens by the "Old Oligarch"

Just as it would not be realistic to judge American democracy as a whole by speeches about malice toward none
and charity for all, so we must beware of concluding from
the idealism of the Funeral Oration of Pericles that all
his hearers shared his favorable view of government by
the people. ...

Selections from Thucydides' History

Everybody knows Macaulay's judgment that Thucydides
was the greatest historian who ever lived. Not so many
people know Thucydides; in fact nowadays he is probably
more admired than read. Or if he is read, he is read
either as history, in which case he is the business of
historians, or as literature, ...

The Attic Orators

The Greeks appear to have had an innate love of the
spoken word. Homer's poems abound in speeches. We
learn that Phoenix was commissioned to teach Achilles
to be "both a speaker of words and a doer of deeds."
Nestor is proclaimed as the "clear-voiced speaker from
Pylos, from whose tongue there flowed speech sweeter
than honey." ...

The Greek Scientists

By the term"science" we today usually understand
the study of nature in accordance with certain well-understood
principles and logical procedures. We are
so used to them that we take them for granted; but their
discovery was a long and slow process, and their combination
into the methods of investigation to which we
are accustomed ...

Selections from Plato

The dialogues of Plato hold a central position in the
development of philosophical thought. Before his time
there had been in Greece detached moral sayings of
"wise men," and speculations about the underlying unity
of the physical world; there had been groups of religious
men who held that the soul is immortal ...

Selections from Aristotle

Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) was a native of Stagira, in
Macedonia, where his father was a friend and court
physician to King Amyntas II. In 367, at the age of
seventeen, he traveled to Athens to study under Plato,
and he remained a member of the Academy for the next
twenty years—until the death of Plato in 347. ...

Selections from Epicurus

Epicurus, the most important of the ancient atomists,
was born on the island of Samos in 341. After studying
the philosophies of several schools, including the atomism
of Democritus, he set up his own in Athens soon after
307, and taught there until his death in 270. ...

Plutarch's Life of Tiberius Gracchus

The practice of writing accounts of the lives of famous
men goes back at least as far as Xenophon's biographies
of Socrates and Agesilaus in the early part of the fourth
century B.C., and there are many later examples of the
form; but the most famous ancient biographies are
surely the Parallel Lives of Plutarch. ...

Selections from Epictetus

When autocratiac rule put an end to the political initiative and responsibility which the individual citizen had
enjoyed in both democratic Greece and Republican
Rome, one philosophy served more adequately than any
other to offer consolation: Stoicism, with its doctrine
that man could still control all that essentially matters, ...

Selections from Lucian

Lucian, a Syrian, was born in Samosata (now Samsat),
a small town on the upper Euphrates, about A.D. 120,
and died toward the end of that century. In youth, tiring
of provincial life, he perfected his Greek and became a
professional rhetorician. As such he made a living for
a number of years, ...

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